Smith & Wesson No. 3 1st Model U.S. Army Revolver

The U.S. Army acquired 1000 of these revolvers in 1871 for testing purposes. With 200 nickel and the remaining 800 being blued nickel specimens will be worth more than their blue counterparts. As with any item used and abused by the Army original high grade specimens are not common with the remaining specimens usually in very good and lower conditions.

To be considered authentic the revolvers must have the following attributes. First are the initials U.S. stamped on the barrel rib at the front of the cylinder. Nickel specimens have an inspector’s mark of A on the left grip, barrel, cylinder and frame. Blued Specimens have both an A and a P in the same locations.

The most common thing these gun need to have is inclusion in an old handwritten list of serial numbers that listed the gun sold to the Army. Some of the numbers are not entirely clear and around 20 were repeated so it is likely there are a few guns out there that missed this list. Those will probably not bring full value as there authenticity can’t be positively proved.

All blued specimens occur below serial number 1895 except for numbers 1722, 1729, 1863 and 1865 which were finished in nickel. Conversely all guns from 1895 to 2199 were nickel except for 1951, 1958, 1967, 1998 and 2053 which were finished blue.

As stated earlier it is believed a few exist that are not on this list but expert appraisal is a must to confirm their authenticity and even then prices may not be as high as for listed serial numbers.